Yaíma Sáez: "My truth is the defense of the song, although it may seem a cliché".

After talking for approximately one hour and thirty-six minutes, Yaíma Sáez ends by saying that she is a shy woman. "Although people see me as an inaccessible person -perhaps because I have not made concessions- I am very sensitive, it is hard for me to socialize and I know that this is important in this career. Indifference hurts me, that's why sometimes I prefer to keep my distance. Now, with the public I try to be what I am: as natural as possible," he explains. Can you be shy and talkative at the same time? I remain in doubt. However, with Yaima you can talk in perfect harmony; she manages to explain in detail why she decided to take this or that decision in her professional life. For example, just as she was about to finish her thesis in Pedagogical Sciences, she had the opportunity to try her hand as an interpreter and... we already know how powerful a stage can be. Now everything is told quickly -accustomed as we are to the final result- but a few years passed between the trips from Camagüey to Havana and the papers that would endorse his quality, until in 2006 Luis Carbonell picked up the phone. 

"My soul fell when they told me there was no chance of getting into the catalog. I had come to Havana just for that! The only thing that occurred to me was to go to the house of master Luis Carbonell. I apologized for my audacity and told him everything, I needed to get it off my chest. Then he picked up the phone and called Orlando Vistel: 'Here I have Yaíma Sáez, one of the few contraltos in Cuba, what are we going to do?'. It wasn't even three minutes. Tomorrow go to the Cuban Institute of Music at 8:00 a.m.', he told me. I entered as an exceptional case in the catalog of the Antonio María Romeu Company and a week later I made my debut in the second shift of El Gato Tuerto (EGT). I sang about twenty songs," he recalls.

Photo: Courtesy of the artist.

"I feel I am a songstress, I am not a bolero singer", Yaima emphasizes, although certainly in Havana she began to be known more for her participation in bolero festivals. About this, she insists: "I have sung tango, changüí, son... and according to musicologists that defines a cancionera. I am convinced [that] my path is and will be as a singer-songwriter. Ah, that life takes me to other directions, well...".

-Don't you think that female singers are undervalued in Cuba?

-Yes, I think so, and it is our own fault. In all of that influences the training and the desire to defend what you want. In these things you always have to have people who support you: businessmen, repertoire writers, producers and to love this line of work. Today there are more songstresses than songwriters and those of us who are left, I think we are less than ten. The other thing is that we songstresses have nowhere to present ourselves. EGT, for example, is not a space -unfortunately- that remunerates songwriters as it should be. The payments are not in accordance with the first figures.

-Since when do you not sing there?

-Since 2012 or 2013. I started my career at the top when EGT was a temple of song. There was Ela Calvo, María Antonieta, Héctor Téllez, Raquel Hernández, Asseneth Rodríguez... It was all very magical, even the vocals on off by Héctor Quintero. 

-To me, the cancioneras remind me of the folkloric women of Spain, among them there are their rivalries....

-Look, the reguetoneros or urban music [artists] have united and among themselves they make their projects, create record labels... The jazz people also have a lot of strength. But the songwriters, because of that same rivalry (healthy or however you want to think of it) we have divorced. I come from another world [pedagogy] and that has allowed me to show that in a cabaret or in a show I go to work, to improve myself or to listen to advice from the consecrated ones. This training has allowed me in these almost twenty years to navigate with positivism, without professional jealousy.

-So, you are the least "controversial" of the songwriters?

-(Laughs). People say I'm heavy and it's because I don't like to waste time; I don't like to go to a bolero festival, for example, with arrangements from the 60's. That arrangement has to be done for me and if the orchestra can't do it, I don't do it. That arrangement has to be done for me and if the orchestra can't do it, I don't do it. Maybe I am controversial in that sense. I don't like to do ugly things: I have a discipline, an order, let's say, methodological, and if I get to a place I like to be the best. The figure of the repertorist is also missing. Fortunately, I had the guidance of maestro Carbonell, whom I miss very much, and later, when I had my own musical group, I understood things he told me. 

Photo: Courtesy of the artist.

-Can it be said that you were one of Luis Carbonell's last disciples? 

-I think so. In fact, his last theater presentation was with me in December 2013. Those moments with Carbonell I enjoyed them so much because he was a man of many tales, anecdotes, stories... When I conceived the show, I was so happy. Jewels of time I didn't know what I was going to sing and I went with him. He told me: "I'll do the repertoire for you, but you sing it, even if you don't like it". I was criticized by many people who thought that at his age he was out of fashion. Nothing could be further from the truth. And for a while we worked together and I learned the songs note by note; I got to know the stories of the songs, of their authors? The mazucamba was the last subject that the master rode me on and look, it became a hit to such an extent that I would go through a basic secondary school or a pre-university and they would recognize me for that subject. That's when you realize [that] experience doesn't fail. After he died I had a hard time making the record, but I had the great Lucía Huergo in the musical production.

-There is very little diffusion of your work in Cuba, why?

-I don't know and I'm aware of that. Maybe if I wore a lycra, or exhibited my body more, or polemicized in social networks... But I'm not that product. I prefer to have a debate where I can be heard and speak my truth, at the right time, and my truth is the defense of the song, of the Cuban woman in all her splendor, even if it seems banal or a cliché, that's my battle. And nobody can tell me anything: I ride a motorcycle or walk, I have been a rented woman in Havana.... 

However, when I go abroad the diffusion and reception is totally different, huge: in Mexico, Colombia, Spain, Canada... I have articles in the press, interviews, reviews... But here it's not the same, I don't know why.

-How are you doing with social networks?

Social networks are a double-edged sword. When nobody here was using them back in 2008, 2009, I had the opportunity to be in Mexico and I opened all those channels. But I do believe a lot in the media as a function of art, of telling a well-argued truth. I love everything they do, that's why I'm here with AM: PM. (Laughs).

-Do you currently have a work team?

-I had it before 2020 but the pandemic came, my work went more towards Spain and definitely, everyone went their own way. I understood that another stage was coming.

On February 28, coinciding with Elena Burke's birthday, the phonogram was presented at the Ludwig Foundation in Cuba. Twelve jewels where Yaíma, besides being a music producer, performs songs by Roberto Valera, winner of the National Music Award. Bis Music's material, recorded at D'Bega Studios, goes through genres such as the song, guaracha, bolero and ballad. In this regard, she says: 

"I'm in love with that album and I feel happy despite the circumstances in which it was made: there were no musicians, some were out of Cuba... Even if you see me immodest, I'm sure [that] it's an album for song reference because it offers a lot of information. I know it's not going to have that transcendence in Cuba, even if something happens at the international level, that's what we're working on".

In verses (which served as liner notes to Twelve jewels), Roberto Valera says: "And Yaíma appeared with her light that thrills/ with firmness and passion, with ardor and affection,/ with that voice so pure to embroider chimeras/ that the poet kept in his dream case.

Coming soon and for the first time, Yaima will be presented in some Caribbean islands as part of a circus show with the solo of Ruperta the alligator, masterfully interpreted by actress Asseneth Rodriguez for the musical comedy "Ruperta the alligator". Patakín (meaning fable!) by Manuel Octavio Gómez in 1982.

Photo: Courtesy of the artist.

But there is more:

"This year is a year of pleasures: I broke up with the disc. Twelve jewels and from May to July in Spain I will be back with the master Lizt Alfonso in the show Cuba vibrates! It's been a while since I worked with her and I sincerely tell you that she is one of the best artistic directors and Cuban businesswomen with more wisdom that I know. Master Lizt knows how to exploit a talent, how to direct it. She is a director, but her level as an entrepreneur is something gigantic: demanding, perfectionist. And I am also working to present two singles with Meme Solis, a wonderful man. I am going to give myself that luxury at his side".

-Are you not planning any concerts in the near future?

-No. I like to do concerts with everything that goes: theaters, conditions and money, above all.

-Sentimentally, how are you?

-Divine and fulfilled. Professionally I am also well, satisfied because I have done what I wanted to do.

-Don't you see yourself in the future as an entrepreneur, with your own business?

-I'm a singer!Laughs).

Photo: Courtesy of the artist.